Now I need serious talking to about my easy child

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
She is home from college for Christmas break. As usual, she has not done anything wrong or outrageous or negative. But I'm worried about her decision to see the boy's basketball game tonight at her old high school.

Jumper is very private. Nobody knows how Jumper feels inside. That includes me. She just goes with the flow and does not expose her feelings. She is better at talking to other people about theirs. One thing I do know is that she has been sad about her ex-boyfriend ever since she wanted to get back with him (after breaking up with him, breaking his heart, and then suddenly wanting him back). It was very strange. She never explained why she'd broken up with such a nice boy who did anything for her. But she would not take him back when he was still grieving for her. Then suddenly she wanted HIM back as I guess she started to miss him. See, they were platonic best friends, really. No sex. Just trust me on this one. That wasn't a part of it or it would be even worse.

Anyhow, after she started to miss his company and want him back, from what I can gather, she started to broach it with him, but he was scared now and eventually he told her, "I'm done." And he was done. She was broken hearted, although she was well aware that she started her own heartache, but, even so, it has been her nemesis since it happened. Since he said "I'm done" and stopped talking to her completely. She even came home to go to prom this year (he is a year behind her in school) and she saw him, without a date, but he would not make eye contact with her or say a work. Hubby and I were at Julie's house during this time. She called me hysterical begging me to come home because she was in so much anguish.

Jumper NEVER does that so we went home and I talked to her and she seemed better. She listened to my "suggestion" that she not post pictures of them together on her FB and not try to call him and force him to talk to her...that she could not control him, only her reaction to him, and that she had to love herself first...she went back to college sounding and looking much better.

I went to see her play basketball last weekend and did talk to a few of her very sweet friends and one told me that she is doing better, but still cares fo this boy. It's been going on five months now. But at least she is busy at college and has tons of friends there.

Tonight she is going to watch her old school's boys basketball team. Her ex is on the team. I told her it was going to hurt. She said she knew. I tried later to talk more, but she told me she did not want to discuss it and I always respect her wishes, as an adult, and I backed off and am now just letting it go. There is nothing I can do to stop her. Of course, I already feel her pain and know he will do exactly what he did at prom...not speak to her. I know that her not seeing him for a few months helped heal her wound and that seeing him will be pouring salt back into the wound and her feelings for him will surface and rage again. And, since she is so private, I worry if SHE will get so distraught that she will do something to herself. But there is nothing I can do to stop it.

So here I am at the computer, knowing she is getting ready to go in the bathroom. I admit I feel queasy. I need your wise advice on letting go. And before you say she makes good choices, yes, she does. She doesn't do drugs, or smoke anything, or hang with those who do. She tries hard and passeda ll her classes in school and is on her way to Criminal Justice. But she is also a very private young woman who is very in love with a very nice young man who is not going to give her another chance...and she is deliberately going to see him play basketball. After the game, all the kids mingle. Also, she will see his family, and most likely they will be cold and distant after having treated her like one of the family at one time.

What do you wise ladies have to tell me so that I stop fretting over this? Last time haunts me. I was really scared. Fortunately she has a huge support system, but most of them are in LaCrosse now, not here.

I wish she would let it go, but I'm not in charge here and I'm not going to make a big deal out of it to her. She needs to learn her own lessons. I just hope this decision doesn't damage her. Yes, I'm being dramatic. But things were moving on. This will be a set back. So unecessary too.
 

Childofmine

one day at a time
MWM, it is so hard to watch someone you love walk into a situation where she is likely to be hurt. Like you said, she knows that already, and she wants to go anyway. Who knows why? Maybe she thinks he has changed, maybe she wants to prove it to herself that she can do it and survive it, maybe she wants to see the other people who will be there.

I think this is again, part of the natural order of things. I had a boyfriend like that once. He broke up with me, after I was "mean" to him (I was 14, okay...) and then I so regretted it all. I wanted him back so desperately. For years and years, decades, I dreamed about him, what if, what would have been.

Then, one day, I called him about our class reunion. The conversation was illuminating. I realized my fantasy of who he was, was just that, a fantasy. There were no more dreams after that phone call.

I think we women are so desperately romantic and often, what we can't have is SO what we want.

Jumper will be just fine. She is doing well in school (great sign of adjustment) and she is away from home on her own, as someone her age should be.

MWM, you worry because you love her, and that is normal.

Get busy and get your mind on something else. There are many fish in the sea for Jumper. She is so young. Let this play out and it will pass. It really will.

Warm hugs to you, dear wise one. You already know what to do and how to do it---you do it every day already.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Thanks so much for responding, COM.

I think, in our angst about difficult children, some people forget or don't understand that we worry every bit as much about our PCs.

I'm relieved that I didn't try to stop her though. For some reason, she wants to go and at her age and with her maturity level I have no right to stop her. I'm afraid she will hope this is the magic bullet that pulls them back together again, but she is usually level-headed and maybe hopeful but not unrealistic????

She has so much to learn at eighteen, even though she is basically on a positive track.

I'm going to relax and read. This is out of my hands.

Again, thank you for responding. I'm sure many here are rolling their eyes. "She's worried about a kid who isn't even in trouble?" And I get it too, but, still, your kid is your kid. You do worry. And it doesn't stop either.

Hugs to you for caring.
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I understand your feelings MWM. Last year my granddaughter broke up with her boyfriend of 2 years. She cried a lot. Then after a little while, she also changed her mind and wanted him back and he said no. She was heartbroken. But, she moved on. I on the other hand, missed that boyfriend more then she did!! He had become a part of our family, was at our house all the time and is a really, wonderful young man. He was like a son to me. My husband said, "it's like he broke up with you!!" I was very sad. But, we all moved on, thank goodness.

And, like COM, I recall having a boyfriend when I was 16 and he broke up with me. I was so devastated. I thought about that boy for a decade. I think we have to try to remember how dramatic life is when you're a teen. I remember my best friend and I almost purposely languishing in all the dramatic emotions.......we would commiserate on how intense our feelings were. Thankfully we grew out of that, but I think teenage girls have a certain attachment to the dramatic romantic aspects of relationships and on some level enjoy the intensity even when it hurts.

We outgrow those feelings and I think we forget how intense it all was then.

You worrying about her is part of your love for her, as COM said. They are our little girls and we know how much a broken heart hurts, we've all had one (or more) and we empathize with that hurt. I do that too.

It's good to write it down as you have and move away as you have.......

Hugs to you MWM..............
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Thanks to both of you. She came home and was fine. We talked for a while...about college, her new friends (they are great) and how she doesn't want a boyfriend for a long time (suspect she is just not interested in the heartache and wants nothing to do with sex right now...which is important. Her first two boyfriends were good without it, but now she's in college). She talked about her classes and being a cop and how everyone says it's perfect for her and we decided she'll pick me up from work tomorrow and hang out, maybe visit Sonic too.

I am so proud of her.

Going back to my other threat on Watercooler about my narcissistic father, this time with Jumper means so much more to me than what is in my father's head.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I'm sorry to be coming in late, MWM. Company at my house for the duration. Now having coffee and catching up. I am happy this turned out well for Jumper.

Maybe because I hadn't been involved at the beginning, your thread taught me something very good to know. I could feel the heart-to-heart of the way you feel about your child...and I realized those are the feelings, that is the intensity of feeling, normal moms feel. It is normal, perfectly acceptable, for us to feel as we do about our difficult children; it is what a mom who loves her children does. It is when the child is troubled that our normal concerns for our children turn into some endlessly turning treadmill of unremitting, inescapable escapades.

But we love them, just the same.

We hurt for them, just the same.

We are normal.

I am normal.

I have been in such pain, for so long, that I sometimes feel like there must be something wrong with me. Why I cannot turn away without feeling guilty that I haven't helped, or haven't helped enough, why I never seem able to think about my kids with the same bright pleasure I see in their faces when other moms think about their kids...sometimes, I wonder what is wrong with me. It seems there must be something the matter with my brain.

But that isn't true.

Just as you mother Jumper, so we all are mothering our children, difficult child or not, too.

It is so important for us to remember that. I forget sometimes, and that is when I blame myself for what has happened, or for not being able to see, in the family husband and I created, anything that looks like even like the ghost of normal. My children and grands are scattered all over the country. Literally, there is no way I could afford to bring them all home for Christmas. It's been something like six years since the faces around my table at Christmas have been the faces of those who look like me, of those who have that special feel of family.

I learned last week that one of my grandchildren is five feet tall, already.

It was like a dagger in my heart, to mark the past two years in that unrecoverable, time forever lost way.

So this was such a nice thread for me to read.

I am so happy everything turned out well for Jumper. I remember her break up with this boy.
I like it that she does not run away from things.

I love the way your love your kids.

Reading stories like this one about Jumper highlight how truly rotten it is to parent difficult child children. Our hearts truly are in our mouths, our mother love is right there, out in the open for every child...but our difficult children invariably choose the wrong path and break our hearts and over time, our spirits.

It is easy to forget that, sometimes. We really do have a hard road. If I look at it this way, I am strong, courageous even, in the face of something so awful that is happening, that is still happening, to my child, whatever her age.

How awful to add guilt because it hurts me, or to pile on a serving of self judgment to the living horror of what has already happened, of everything that's already been lost.

There is a photographer on Facebook: Humans of New York. I think that is where I saw this. Anyway, there is a one hundred year old woman interviewed. Some children and her husband are long dead. She says: "That's alright. He was a good husband. He's gone, now. But he was a good husband and we were happy."

Something like that.

That interview made quite an impression on me.

What we do here ~ raising and loving and sometimes, losing, such intensely troubled human beings ~ is an astronomically pain filled thing.

But look at us, making it.

Loving them, learning again to love ourselves, to give ourselves full credit for what it is to do what we do.

We are amazing mothers, amazing fathers.

We need never to forget that.

Cedar

.
 

Childofmine

one day at a time
I'm afraid she will hope this is the magic bullet that pulls them back together again, but she is usually level-headed and maybe hopeful but not unrealistic????

And....maybe it was be a magic bullet or whatever she is thinking or hoping...or maybe it was not. Whatever it was, whatever happened, she is on her journey, her path, that only she can walk.

She is learning every step of the way how to live life.

You are a wonderful support and companion for her, MWM.

I think we learn how not to worry about difficult children, and in a crazy way, we transfer that "mommy angst" onto the PCs sometimes.

Lol, us crazy moms.

I'm glad she was okay.
 
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